We have recently undergone some big changes at Sticky to better reflect the agency’s positioning and aspirations.

Twelve years ago we launched Sticky as a full service advertising agency before transitioning into our more well known “digital” positioning. And in twelve years of business we have really learned what we’re good at, and it’s how to grow businesses. In fact, it’s become the main focus of our agency. That’s why we’ve announced the biggest update to our branding since 2005.

We exist to help companies grow faster with powerful marketing in a digital world.

But for us the basic challenge remains….. to help our clients attract more potential customers so they can grow their businesses. That’s why we no longer consider ourselves to be just a “digital agency”, but rather an agency delivering powerful marketing in a digital world.

Our brief was to help reposition and market the fund to attract new members nationally in what is an incredibly crowded and competitive industry, with around 500 super funds in Australia.

Extensive research and customer analysis revealed a niche that has been ignored in the superannuation industry; small business owners. In fact, small businesses with less than 20 employees make up 34% of the Australian economy.

That focus, and a rebrand to reflect the national reach of the fund lead us to relaunch NSF Super as Nationwide Super….Small Business Super Business.

As part of the relaunch of Nationwide’s new brand positioning ‘Small Business Super Business’, we created a series of videos and television commercials which include testimonials of 5 different ‘small business owners’. The TV campaign commenced on SBS and Foxtel nationally from March, 2017 before moving to network television. You can see the ads here.

Most business owners these days understand the need for a social media plan, but not all owners know how to create a simple but successful social media plan.

Here are four questions to lay the foundation:

Who is your audience?

Review customer inquiries, customer sales, your service area and the profile of returning customers. What are the common factors? Write a customer profile, i.e. “Our customers are, on average, 18 to 45 years old, looking for (product / service) within 30 kilometres of our business location.

Where is your audience?

Determine which social networks your customers use. Even ask some existing customers. Match your customer base to the most compatible social media networks. Then research the networks and learn about the best times to post, the most popular posts, and the cost of ads on each network.

What do you want them to know?

Ask yourself what it is that you want them to know about your business? When you understand your audience, you will understand what matters to them. Is it price? Location? Service? Variety? Formulate your message to address the primary needs and interests of your audience.

What do you want them to do?

Now, what do you want your audience to do? Subscribe for updates? Contact you by phone? Buy online? Visit your store? The answer to the question “what do you want them to do?” defines your next step.

The goal of a social media plan should be to direct customers to your website as this is the property you actually own. Don’t invest too much in driving traffic to a location you don’t own. Pay attention to how you funnel social media outlets back to your website. Be sure that potential clients immediately find your call to action.

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear US President Barack Obama speak at the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas. It was the first time in the 30-year history of SXSW that a sitting president had addressed the event and was a sure sign that the world’s most powerful man recognises the importance of technology in society.

President Obama’s main message was that government, which he acknowledged as slow-moving, and the tech industry needed to work together to solve society’s biggest challenges.

He especially focused on technology’s role in civic life. Calling on government and private companies to work together, Obama said it’s vital to “create systems that make government more responsive and make it work better.”

Noting the USA’s notoriously low voter turnout at election time, he said it was “easier to order a pizza than to vote” and said we need to think about how to “redesign our systems so that we don’t have 50 per cent or 55 per cent voter participation in presidential elections.”

The “digital divide”, an issue we also share in Australia, was a keen topic of discussion for the President who listed a range of government programs including Opportunity Network, which installs WiFi in low-income housing and rural areas; and Open E-books to enable school textbooks for access for all. His administration has a goal to connect 98 per cent of US classrooms to high speed internet by 2018, by working in conjunction with the private sector and training teachers. Just wait until this generation of connected kids hit the workforce.

But Obama’s constant refrain was that solving problems requires co-operation. He said the country needs to re-imagine the relationship between government and the private sector “so that we use technology data, social media in order to join forces around problems.” In the President’s opinion, government initiatives work better if supplemented by the private sector who have access to the brightest minds in tech.

It is a message that has equal relevance in Australia where slow moving government and the private sector should be encouraged to work together more. Agile solutions are the hallmark of the tech industry and such thinking could easily be used to solve daily issues. Everything from parking meter technology to national healthcare could be addressed via better co-operation and greater efficiency.

After years of waiting, the National Broadband Network has arrived in Newcastle and local companies can finally take advantage of the benefits of higher speed broadband to grow their businesses nationally or even globally.

While several reports have indicted that Hunter businesses are lagging when it comes to digital adoption, the arrival of the NBN might be the catalyst to faster, more efficient business.

According to a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, 94 per cent of jobholders are internet users and 54 per cent say the internet is important to doing their jobs. It stands to reason that the more efficient the connection to internet is, the more productive work you can achieve compared to today’s slow options.

Grow your customer base

High speed broadband helps businesses to operate with greater speed, using more sophisticated technologies to enable enhanced connectivity and collaboration. Access to fast, reliable broadband brings video conferencing to life allowing you to conduct meetings, regardless of location, face to face without leaving your desk. Imagine how much time and travel expense you can save? It also has the benefit of improving the online experience for your customers and remove potential geographic barriers, providing your business with greater flexibility and increased access to global markets. You’ll have the potential to sell new products and services, exploit new channels to market and to offer services globally.

The opportunity to improve your operational efficiencies and change the way you do business in the future is significant. In fact, a study of 600 businesses in North America found that companies adopting broadband-enabled technologies experienced 27-31 per cent revenue increases.

Build your best team

The widespread availability of fast, reliable broadband allows for more flexible working arrangements and the ability to open up new employment opportunities, including those in more remote locations.

A superior connection allows for faster sharing of large files and easier, better collaboration between your company and customers or vendors. These days the idea of “work as a place” is changing and so bringing together the best possible team regardless of location can be a significant advantage. This sort of work flexibility can lead to increased productivity, greater employee satisfaction, and reduced travel and importantly, save money in the long term.

Meanwhile, platforms like Huddle allow users to share a secure workspace and collaborate on projects, documents, share videos, use shared whiteboards, all in a completely paperless way.

In my own business, even with slow old ADSL broadband, we now collaborate with a team of amazing people in Brisbane, Sydney, New Zealand, Colorado and Canada in order to deliver our services to our clients. By being early adopters of digital technology and marketing we have been fortunate enough to work with clients in USA, Europe, NZ and Australia-wide. This is only going to improve with the NBN and it can for you too.

IF you’re running a small or mid-sized business you’ve probably wondered many times about how to promote your business online without spending or wasting too much money.

Is online display advertising effective? Should you do SEO or would SEM suit you better? Is re-marketing a good idea or should you consider doing more on social media? What about email marketing? No matter what choice you make, you are likely to have that nagging feeling that your marketing mix is not right.

In order to get your marketing mix right it is crucial to answer a few important questions first:

What is your business focus and your target geography?

Is your business selling to other businesses (B2B) or do you sell to consumers (B2C)? Does your business serve its customers over a large area or does it serve a local community? These answers will focus your attention to your target segment and area.

Do you sell a product or a service?

Does your business sell a service to others like lawn mowing or consultancy or does it sell an actual product the customer can touch and feel? Selling a service online is very different to selling a product and so it is important to remove media channels that don’t lend themselves effectively to selling what you offer.

Who is your real customer?

Ask yourself who your main users are? Is it men, women or children? Define the demography of your target audience. A good way to do that is to actually describe your customer.

This helps you focus strongly on who you want to target to and where they are.

Is your business something that the consumer searches for actively? If so, how do they search?

Far too many businesses decide to spend money on various directories and paid search campaigns without asking themselves whether their audience within their geographical area is actually looking for such a product or service.

How frequently is your product or service purchased?

Defining how frequently your product or service is purchased by the same consumer will determine how you need to reach your target audience.

If you’re running a flower delivery service, for example, you may want to keep yourself top of mind with your audience so they remember you. However, if you’re running a consulting practice, you may want to set up regular email correspondence with your target audience on a set frequency.

Does your product or service purchase require personal selling?

Often businesses make the mistake of assuming that because they know their own product or service well enough, everyone else will too. But sometimes consumers really need to see the product or service at work before they understand the benefits and can commit to buying.

If your business is like this you will need to factor in lead generation rather than direct sales as your primary goal for your marketing initiatives.

Are your customers digitally inclined?

If you believe your customers may not be digital savvy it might not be a good idea to invest heavily in online marketing to reach them, especially if your business is not national in nature.

This question could be more directed to businesses targeting parts of the world where internet penetration is still low or demographics, such as the elderly, who don’t spend as much time online.

Answering these important questions will go a long way to helping you determine what your digital marketing strategies should be.

NEXT week I will be celebrating 10 years since I purchased my agency and embarked on a very interesting business journey.

Anniversaries like this tend to be cause for reflection and I can’t help but consider how much has changed in the last decade and how different my business is compared to 2005. What started as a creative agency working with traditional media in the local region is now a digital only agency with clients around the world. That wasn’t the plan but became a reality as things changed.

I am sure I am not alone in experiencing a significant altering of course as the last decade has been tumultuous for businesses around the globe with new technology and global communication disrupting and transforming the business landscape.

I honestly believe that the disruption we have all experienced has changed the way most of us need to do business in the future.

Whole paradigms have changed and new lessons must be learned in order to be successful, especially for regionally based businesses.

These are the 3 biggest changes I have experienced.

You Need to Find a niche

The days of the full service business are over. You see it in all areas of business. In the age of the smartphone app as a business, you can’t afford to have a broad uncompetitive offering.

We started out as a full service agency but quickly realised that such a broad offering actually limited our potential to just servicing the Hunter Region. The more we narrowed our focus and offerings, the more successful we became, winning increasingly larger clients nationally and internationally. We couldn’t have done that offering “full service”.

Narrowing your focus also means you have the potential to become excellent at your core offering rather than just good at a range of activities.

I strongly believe that excellence in a niche is the future of business.

Work Isn’t a Place

Ten years ago the office was still the main focus of a business. Remote working existed but most of us still operated with the bulk of the talent under one roof. A more globalised economy and more efficient (and free) communication options have blown that concept apart.

Instead of renting a large office space to house more staff as a company grows it is now possible to have a team spread around the world working more efficiently.

I have a small team in our Newcastle office and another 10 people helping us in Newcastle, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Canada and the US. They are all experts at their niche service and help us deliver higher quality work more rapidly than I believe we could have done previously.

Put Your Head in the Cloud

Just 10 years ago the cost of starting and maintaining a business was considerably higher than it is today. The big change has been the explosion of cost-effective cloud-based applications and SaaS (software as a service).

Now data storage, CRM systems, accounting and payroll applications, and nearly any other business solution you require exist in an easy-to-access, pay-by-the-month cloud-based application. It means that an idea today can literally be a business tomorrow with minimal overhead.

Best of all, these cloud-based applications mean that small businesses like mine can lower costs and invest in more productive talent that is customer focused rather than bogged down in administration.

These three big changes have improved my business over the last decade and I am sure will help many other businesses that embrace change.

I sympathise with small-business owners and marketers who must navigate an increasingly complicated range of options to promote their business and attract customers, especially in the fast-moving digital world.

It seems that every few weeks there is another compelling new site or app that marketers are raving about. Last year photo app Instagram and short video app Vine were the cool places to be.

Already this year Meerkat had the early buzz for streaming live video, but only weeks later Periscope stole its thunder and market share. Now everyone in advertising land is trying to work out his or her Periscope strategy.

Meanwhile, your kids are all on Snapchat and major brands are following.

Of course, media loves the shiny new start-ups and give them coverage and buzz that far outweighs their actual audience numbers and the poor marketer is torn deciding where to invest their budget.

But the truth is, as cool and exciting as some of these new players are, they aren’t going to create lots of traffic or sales or inquiries for most businesses. Sure, there will be a few success stories in the media, but for the average business there won’t be much reward.

Instead, business owners and marketers should ignore the latest fads and stick to what really works online; creating good content and being found in search.

The truth is that 93per cent of online experiences begin with a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo, and here in Australia Google reigns supreme with an amazing 98per cent share of the search market. That is a lot of eyeballs searching for answers.

So it makes sense that being found in search, mainly on Google, is still by far the most cost-effective strategy that exists online for attracting new customers. It has been so for years now, even if the cool kids have moved on.

Being found high up in the search-engine rankings can open the floodgates of traffic to your website. Certainly, over the last 10 years managing marketing for dozens of companies around Australia, I have not seen another form of promotion, advertising or online exposure that has the consistent staying-power and return on investment that optimising your website for search provides. Nothing comes close.

Best of all, leads generated from search are much more likely to buy from you due to the actual nature of the activity. These people are actually searching with the intent to gain information and buy. This isn’t a passive activity; they want answers.

All you have to do is make sure that your content is found on page one of Google for that search to be in the running to win their business. You don’t need to do anything particularly fancy, creative or clever, you just need to be found.

So if I had to give one piece of advice to anyone struggling to decide how to market their business online it would be to ignore the latest fads and start publishing useful content online that answers what their potential customers are searching for. Provide quality content with solutions, tips and helpful advice. It could be a blog post, a video, an infographic or a simple web page. Then just make sure it is optimised properly for search.

These days being found online in search engines for your products, services and benefits is not just a luxury, it’s a necessity in today’s competitive marketplace. I can’t say the same about any other of the latest digital apps and sites.

RECENT history has proven that business disruption via new technology can be rapid and unforgiving. Apple, for instance, took only seven years to dominate the music industry only to find itself battling the shift from paid downloads to advertising-supported music streaming.

Google Maps took just 18 months to destroy almost 85per cent of the market capitalisation of the world’s top GPS vendors.

The problem for most organisations is that they are not evolving their business models quite as rapidly as technology. Many are still in the relatively early stages of transitioning from industrially driven to digitally driven strategies and operational models.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Hunter Region where businesses are really lagging in the adoption of new technology to the point that, almost 25 years after the arrival of the internet, only 57per cent of Hunter companies have a dedicated website, while just 37per cent of companies use social media to market their business, according to a recent survey conducted by the Hunter Research Foundation.

This is simply not good enough if local businesses want to survive in an increasingly globalised and disruptive economy.

According to James McQuivey of Forrester Research, “Digital disruption is not only a possibility for your company’s future but the only possibility.”

Disruption is happening. There is no point disputing that. And yet while companies are aware it’s happening, at least two years or more tend to pass before they react.

As negative judgments dissolve, digital is liberated. This means the old days of defining yourself by today’s rules are over. The impossible is now possible, and the mantra “we don’t do that here” needs to go, according to Kai Riemer, chair of the digital disruption research group at the University of Sydney Business School.

For many years the leadership and use of technology resided in the IT department, but that is no longer viable when technology is disrupting entire business models.

There is only one person in an organisation who can ensure that a company’s digital transformation is a success – and that is its CEO. For true digital transformation, the correct resources need to be allocated and deployed.

It demands a digital transformation strategy to simply survive and realise a sustainable future. Though the transition to digital in many industries is slow, forward thinking companies can realise first mover positioning as a digital leader and gain competitive advantage.

I have seen many digitally savvy organisations adapting all aspects of their business, their customer relationships, and the world around them with great success. These leading companies are using technology to transform themselves into digital businesses that combine their industry expertise with the power of digital to reshape their markets.

It is opening up new markets for them, reducing unnecessary overheads and helping them evolve from local to global businesses.

The threat of disruption is very real and should no longer be ignored by Hunter businesses, but the opportunity and potential is significant for those who embrace change and reject the status quo.

It probably comes as no surprise to hear that mobile device usage is on the rise. Last year marked the first time that mobile internet traffic surpassed desktop traffic, and recent reports show that 60per cent of total digital media time is spent on smartphones and tablets.

What this means for your business is that more customers are finding your website on mobile devices. And if your site is not optimised for mobile viewing, it is highly likely they’re clicking away to your competition.

However, the most compelling reason to ensure that your business site is a responsive website is Google. The world’s most popular search engine stated in 2012 that its algorithms prefer responsive design and the most recent Google algorithm update reinforces the search engine giant’s dedication to mobile-friendly pages.

This year Google has made an even bigger move by announcing, ‘‘Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.’’

What this means is that mobile friendliness will be a ranking criteria for websites on Google. The algorithms will favour mobile-friendly sites, using a real-time, page-by-page basis to determine mobile friendliness, and penalise sites that display poorly on mobile devices. A website that is not a responsive website or mobile-friendly will suffer negative SEO and decreased search engine rankings.

If your site isn’t fully optimised for mobile devices, you will likely see a hit to your ranking on mobile searches. Which is why many in the industry have started calling this ‘‘mobilegeddon.’’

To give you an idea of the importance of this update, Zineb Ait Bahajji, a member of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, was quoted as saying that the new mobile-friendly algorithm change will have more of an impact on search rankings than either Panda or Penguin, two of the largest and most significant search algorithm updates Google has ever launched.

If your site is already mobile-friendly, you won’t have much to worry about. However, if you’ve not yet implemented a mobile strategy for your online presence, now is the critical time to get it done. Most experts are recommending a move towards responsive web design.

A responsive site takes a standard website and instructs the mobile device on how to display it properly. Responsive websites can handle any resolution with changes in CSS files, which affect how the elements on web pages are presented. Computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets will all display the website in the best way possible.

If you’re not sure whether your website meets the criteria, you can use Google’s free testing tool, google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ to analyse your pages, and receive suggestions on how to improve the mobile responsiveness of your website.

But move quickly or you may find your web traffic dropping away rapidly.